Amanda Knox's 2nd appeals trial for murder opens

This image released by NBC shows Amanda Knox during an interview on the "Today" show, Friday, Sept. 20, 2013 in New York. Knox defended her decision not to return to Italy for a new appeals trial over the 2007 killing of her British roommate, even as she acknowledged that "everything is at stake," insisting she is innocent. In March, Italy's supreme court ordered a new trial for Knox and her former Italian boyfriend. An appeals court in 2011 had acquitted both, overturning convictions by a lower court. Italian law cannot compel Knox to return for the new legal proceeding. (AP Photo/NBC, Peter Kramer)

FLORENCE, Italy (AP) — U.S. student Amanda Knox's second appeals trial in her British roommate's murder opened Monday in the absence of the star defendant.

Italy's highest court ordered a new trial for Knox and her former Italian boyfriend, overturning their acquittals in the gruesome 2007 slaying of Meredith Kercher with a harsh assessment of an appeals court acquittal in 2011. The Court of Cassation said the acquittal was full of "deficiencies, contradictions and illogical" conclusions.

The appellate court in Florence is expected to re-examine forensic evidence to determine whether Knox and her former boyfriend helped kill the 21-year-old Kercher while the two women shared an apartment in the Umbrian university town of Perugia.

Knox, now a 26-year-old University of Washington student in Seattle, has not returned to Italy for the trial, nor is she compelled by law to do so. The appellate court hearing the new case could declare her in contempt of court but that carries no additional penalties.

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"We refute the idea that because Amanda is not coming, that Amanda is guilty, that Amanda is using a strategy. Amanda always said she was a friend of Meredith's, Amanda has always respected the Italian justice system," Knox's defense lawyer Luciano Ghirga told reporters before the trial opened.

Knox and her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, now 29, were convicted and later acquitted in Kercher's death. Knox served four years of a 26-year sentence, including three years on a slander conviction for falsely accusing a Perugia bar owner in the murder, before leaving Italy a free woman after her 2011 acquittal.

The bar owner, Patrick Lumumba, showed up at the trial Monday, saying he did so to underline the damage he suffered from Knox's false accusations.

"I say the same thing I said six years ago. I think she is guilty, and that is why she slandered me," Lumbumba told reporters. Knox's conviction for slandering Lumumba has been confirmed by the high court, but it asked the Florence appeals court to determine if it should reinstate it as an aggravating circumstance that Knox lied to derail the investigation and protect herself from becoming a murder suspect.

In its first move, the Florence court rejected a motion by Knox's lawyers to exclude Lumbumba from the new appeals trial as a civil participant, a status that allows him to seek further damages. His lawyer says Lumbumba is owed more than 103,000 euros ($139,500) in legal fees.

Knox's protracted legal battle in Italy has made her a cause celebre in the United States and has put the Italian justice system under scrutiny. Italian law allows prosecutors to appeal acquittals. In the United States, the principal of double jeopardy would have prohibited another appeals round after her acquittal.

At the same time, the trials have left the Kercher family without clear answers in the death of their daughter.

Kercher's body was found in November 2007 in her bedroom of the house she shared with Knox in Perugia, a central Italian town popular with foreign exchange students. Her throat had been slashed.

A third man, Rudy Guede, was convicted in the slaying and is serving a 16-year term. That court found that Guede had not acted alone.

"We are still convinced of the presence of all three of the defendants at the scene of the crime," Kercher family lawyer Francesco Maresca told "I think she is talking too much, sincerely, and this attitude of continuous playing the victim is inappropriate."

In the stunning 2011 acquittal overturning lower court guilty verdicts against Knox and Sollecito and throwing out their long prison terms, a Perugia appeals court criticized virtually the entire case mounted by prosecutors. The appellate court noted that the murder weapon was never found, said that DNA tests were faulty and that prosecutors provided no murder motive.

Yet the Court of Cassation ruling was likewise strident, criticizing the appeals court ruling and saying it "openly collides with objective facts of the case." The high court said the appellate judges had ignored some evidence, considered other evidence insufficiently and undervalued the fact that Knox had initially accused a man of committing the crime who had nothing to do with it.